Asus RT-AC-88U Merlin 361.1 beta 2 big problem

[L&LD]

@boylee, is the router giving you problems though? Low RAM use isn't the goal here, to be clear.

 

[boylee]

no, not at all - i'll monitor the stats, thanks for your help.

 

[Unisoft]

btw, is it usual for router to run at 95%+ ram usage (ax86u)?

I have around 488MB free RAM after everything loaded on my AX86U. If not, an add-in might be causing it. I haven't added any addons to my Merlin firmware though on my old AC86 I did use a QOS addon.

 

[thecheapseats]

btw, is it usual for router to run at 95%+ ram usage (ax86u)?

caveat: I'm not running this (or any) beta on my ac88 or other devices... however as a general point of reference->> after running for several hours, viewing RAM used/free percentages from the gui's Network Map page - they will be higher than your just-booted percentages - so yes - that's normal...

that number for 'used' RAM includes cache and buffer allocations that are initially close to zero at boot time... after viewing this a few hours later (as they've increased) you might conclude that your router is 'eating' ram or has a memory leak - that is not the case... This is the standard memory management function on these routers...

for example - glancing at a router that's been up for several weeks my numbers are 956/68/93% for used / free / % - respectively...

there are both command line and script-gui tools that will give you specifics on these numbers... ask around. if you need that...

 

[boylee]

ha, think i've found the culprit... rightly or wrongly the cache is being loaded up with roughly half the total ram after a period (as mentioned by @thecheapseats above)...

Running @ 88% used after 22hrs

Running @ 50% used post reboot

 

[thecheapseats]

ha, think i've found the culprit... rightly or wrongly the cache is being loaded up with roughly half the total ram after a period<snip>

and dats howzit sposta work...

 

[Unisoft]

ha, think i've found the culprit... rightly or wrongly the cache is being loaded up with roughly half the total ram after a period (as mentioned by @thecheapseats above)...

Running @ 88% used after 22hrs
View attachment 28825


Running @ 50% used post reboot
View attachment 28824

hmmm mine always has around 488MB free even after being up for over a week - have you got any extra plugins? The router does use the memory as required and manage it, but mine had never gone below 488MB, and I have QOS+Apps analysis, AIProtection, WEB URL logging, DDNS, static IPs reserved, my own certificate, port forwarding and NTP all used.

 

[boylee]

hmmm mine always has around 488MB free even after being up for over a week - have you got any extra plugins? The router does use the memory as required and manage it, but mine had never gone below 488MB, and I have QOS+Apps analysis, AIProtection, WEB URL logging, DDNS, static IPs reserved, my own certificate, port forwarding and NTP all used.

no, running a fairly vanilla install - no QOS, AI, DDNS, VPN, port forward etc... do have a few static ip's & smb share for usb HDD, plus skynet now running on merlin fw (thou ram usage was 97% on asus fw w/o skynet).

best guess is the smb share is gobbling all the cache.

 

[jorhett]

best guess is the smb share is gobbling all the cache.

...why I don't provide file service on my core router

 

[RogerSC]

hmm, thanks @L&LD, i followed your setup & the router was behaving as expected - ram steady at 48%, cpu spiking to 50% but normally 0-5%... however got up this morning & found ram back at 97% with nothing else changed... rebooted & ram settles back to 48%... any thoughts what could be causing this behaivour?

Can you ssh into your router and run the "top" linux command and see what process(es) are getting all the CPU cycles? This might lead you to what's going on.

 

[Unisoft]

no, running a fairly vanilla install - no QOS, AI, DDNS, VPN, port forward etc... do have a few static ip's & smb share for usb HDD, plus skynet now running on merlin fw (thou ram usage was 97% on asus fw w/o skynet).

best guess is the smb share is gobbling all the cache.

So I'd say yes on RT-AC86U as that was noticeably slower sharing USB3 drive out and used loads of memory leaving around 96MB free on average.
On new AX86U, I have the same pen enabled, transfers are MUCH quicker and I have around 488MB free memory. I have two of these AX86U's as one is a present for family that I am configuring for them which they will get when lockdown is over.

 

[boylee]

Can you ssh into your router and run the "top" linux command and see what process(es) are getting all the CPU cycles? This might lead you to what's going on.

ok, tried this, cpu mostly 98%+ idle... however ran a video file from my smb HDD & witnessed ram usage climb from 54% to 97% in minutes, cpu had fleeting spikes to 10-15%... couldn't spot the command causing spikes but it seemed to coincide with rising ram cache & this smb command...
13517 1870 boylee S 12912 1.3 1 0.0 /usr/sbin/smbd -D -s /etc/smb.conf

here's a snapshot of "top" headers if that provides any insight...
Mem: 898256K used, 27648K free, 0K shrd, 2260K buff, 572920K cached
CPU: 0.2% usr 1.2% sys 0.0% nic 98.4% idle 0.0% io 0.0% irq 0.0% sirq
Load average: 1.44 1.55 1.61 1/149 18350


with video file still playing, free ram is bouncing from 25-32mb free (97% usage)... stopping the video memory settles roughly on below

 

[jorhett]

smbd is the daemon transfering the file for you. That behavior seems entirely normal. "Use all free memory to transfer files" is how a file server operates, as several people have told you.

But using a router as a file server makes it hard to distinguish if there is perhaps a memory leak somewhere else. You need to use ps commands periodically and sort the memory consumed to figure that out.